India, Indonesia and Australia will form the first "troika" to confer on the Indian Ocean, a first step towards a trilateral grouping in Asia.

NEW DELHI: India, Indonesia and Australia will form the first "troika" to confer on the Indian Ocean, a first step towards a trilateral grouping in Asia. This new engagement is believed to be significant as all three countries seek to hedge against possible Chinese expansionism.

Peter Varghese, Australian high commissioner and new foreign secretary, said Canberra would be taking charge of the Indian Ocean regional grouping next year, and an India-Australia-Indonesia trilateral would be one of the early deliverables. Talking to TOI on the eve of his departure, Varghese said, "We will have a troika with Indonesia, the incoming vice-chair. This will be a good window to do things, to push practical agenda for IORARC."

The Indian Ocean is proving to be an important strategic outreach for India, as well as Australia, which now focuses more on what it calls the "Indo-Pacific" rather than East Asia. It has created convergences between India and countries like Australia in ways that would not have happened earlier.

Varghese said, "I think we are in a qualitative new space in the (bilateral) relationship. We have now cleared the obstacles that were holding the relationship back. The students' safety issue, while we don't want to be complacent about it, I think is behind us. The uranium issue is now resolved. We've now got some clear air in the relationship."

India is looming higher in the Australian mindset. India, as Varghese points out, is not only the source for the largest number of legal migrants into Australia, it's also one of the greatest sources for skilled labour. The Australian government's recent white paper places a big emphasis on the India relationship. For the first time, both countries are working on geo-political and security issues — the two nations have quietly launched a bilateral dialogue on East Asia.

The big thing, Varghese says, will be an India-Australia approach towards building up the East Asia Summit into an important element of a regional security architecture. "This is a time of some fluidity strategically in Asia, and it's very instant. We are trying to create institutions that help us manage what is going to be a historic transition in the region. The history of Asia is not strong on institutions. It offers a good prospect to get a single institution that can deal with big economic and strategic issues in an integrated way. Australia and India have common objectives."

Last week's East Asia summit showed how the forum can be easily hijacked by territorial disputes. Varghese observes, "The next EAS will be held in the background of a number of concerns about what is happening in relation with territorial disputes in the region. It would be a natural thing for the EAS to discuss that. We all want to see those issues resolved in a way that uphold certain core principles, the most important of which is the peaceful resolution of disputes and also a resolution which respects international law, freedom of navigation and freedom of the high seas."